A Bride for the Prizefighter: A Victorian Romance Read online

  Lord Faris came looking for her long before they had finished, and Hannah assured her she was more than capable of completing the task before she secured the property and returned the key. Mina embraced Hannah, and the servant slipped a weighted piece of paper into her palm as they drew apart. She shot a warning look at Mina as she bobbed a curtsey to Lord Faris.

  “Thank you for everything, Hannah. I have left your references on the desk. I do hope you will be happy with Mrs. Fortescue.”

  “Yes miss, I’m sure. And you take care of yourself.”

  Touching a hand to the locket at her throat, Mina turned and followed her half-brother out of the door and out of Hill School for Young Ladies, forever.

  2

  One week later

  The carriage lurched again, and Mina’s hand shot out to brace herself against the padded sides. Lord Faris’s coach was luxurious and flaunted his crest on every available surface, yet even wealth it seemed could not shield you from all discomfort on the open road.

  A succession of inns and the merest glimpse of bustling Exeter had been all Mina had experienced en route, for Lord Faris had not wanted to tarry and had pressed his coachman hard. The four white horses had been exchanged at Exeter for four gray horses and they had pressed on. Now, on the seventh day, they had set out bright and early for the final leg of the journey.

  She wished she could take the opportunity to enjoy the Cornish scenery, for what she could see from the window was astonishingly varied. Rocky outcrops one minute and lush green barley fields the next. As for the glimpses she caught of the coastline, they were tantalizingly lovely even when the sea mist obscured the detail.

  Mina had now spent six and a half days in the company of her half-brother and was no longer surprised by his mercurial changes in mood. Her heart sank when she saw his silver hip flask appear mid-morning and at every inn they passed, he demanded it refilled. Usually, he waited until their evening meal before he began imbibing and it seemed an ill-omen for his homecoming that he would make it blind drunk.

  As the day wore on, he became steadily more wild-eyed and disheveled in appearance, his necktie hanging untied, his collar open. Mina watched him with pursed lips. Now she could recognize the signs, she thought he must have been drinking heavily on the first occasion she had met him.

  “You look nothing like her,” he said, suddenly rousing her from her ruminations. “You must take after the school-master. A great pity.”

  “Apparently, my lord,” she corrected him in a low but firm voice. “I take after my paternal grandmother who was a woman of great resolve.”

  He gave a soft laugh at that. “I just bet you do.”

  “How do you know I look nothing like her?” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Do you tell me you remember her? Despite the fact she left when you were so young?”

  His eyebrows rose. “There is a full-size portrait of my—our—dearly departed mother hanging in the gold sitting room at Vance Park.”

  A portrait? “I have her miniature,” she admitted. “My father commissioned a matching pair for their first wedding anniversary.”

  “Indeed?” His eyes flew to her locket. “May I see it?”

  She had half a mind to refuse him, but her mother’s memory forestalled her. Instead she reached wordlessly for the clasp on her bronze locket and unfastened it. The catch was stiff and fiddly, she opened the oval locket before passing it to him.

  He took it from her and sat studying it a moment. “Undoubtedly the same sitter though my father’s artist was infinitely more skilled.”

  “Doubtlessly infinitely more expensive also,” she replied dryly.

  The smile on his lips grew. “You get your coloring from your father, I suppose,” he said, transferring his gaze to the opposite side of the locket. “That middling brown shade of your hair. I had hoped you would resemble her more.”

  Jeremy Vance, Viscount Faris was starting to grate on her nerves. “She was also a very sweet-tempered person with excellent manners. It seems we neither of us resemble her in temperament, brother.” It was the first time she had addressed him as such, and certainly the first time she had shown him outright the sharpness of her tongue. To his credit, he threw back his head and laughed. She had a suspicion he was more than half-cut at this point. A vulgar expression she had learnt from Hannah, their old maid, but she remembered it now and applied it in her thoughts.

  She did not know this man, and she did not believe him to be the protector her father had hoped he would be. A dull sense of panic had been rising in her for the past few days like a nasty wellspring that might eventually bubble up and overwhelm her. Now she had left Bath, any meagre acquaintances she might were over a hundred and fifty miles behind her.

  Hannah would have already taken up her new position and she had precious other friends. Lady Ralph no longer responded to her letters and Canon Whitehaven seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Of their ex-pupils, several had written her pretty letters when they had first left Hill school, but those had naturally tailed off with time when they had entered society or married.

  It was a bleak thought, that this was the only family left to her. This blonde, laughing, drunkard with eyes full of spite and malice for all he was so pretty.

  “Sadly, I already have one viper-tongued shrew in residence at Vance Park,” he said with mock-regret. “My viscountess, the Lady Caroline. I had hoped... but there. Things rarely turn out as we anticipate.” He passed her locket back to her.

  He had hoped she would be some simpering miss who would cast herself on his chest and beg for his clemency, she thought with shrewdness. Perhaps he had thought to find a gentle confidante in his half-sister. A sort of saintly shadow of his long-forgotten mother. Willing to flatter and cajole him and hang on his every word. Their mother certainly would have she realized bitterly.

  “In short, madam, you are not what I expected.” He drew out a cigarillo case and without asking her permission and lit up a thin dark cheroot. Her nose wrinkled for it smelt vile. He noticed her reaction and smiled again. “I cannot see that we would suit.”

  A strange way of putting it, she thought. Almost as if he were jilting her.

  “I agree,” she answered shortly. If he thought she was going to beg for his mercy, he was sadly mistaken. “Perhaps you should set me down at the next inn and I can make my own way back to Bath at the next opportunity.” It was a bold statement, full of stiff-necked pride for she knew both how little remained in her purse and how little was left for her back in Bath. In truth, nothing.

  His eyes flared and for one horrible moment, she thought he would take her up on it. “No, no, there can be no question of anything of that sort,” he said vaguely, his mind clearly miles away. “You are my own flesh and blood and gently reared. I cannot see you cast out on the streets.”

  Her back stiffened, but it was no more than the truth. After paying the costs of Papa’s funeral she was practically destitute. Still, courtesy would have dictated he did not draw this to her own attention.

  “No, I must see you provided for...” He trailed off, sunk in sudden thought. He tugged on his lower lip in contemplation.

  “Perhaps you have a small cottage on your estate,” she suggested with sudden desperation for she did not like the unholy gleam now shining in his blue eyes. “I could give lessons from there - art or music lessons? Or perhaps your wife will know of some acquaintance who has need of a governess?”

  “Teaching? There’s precious little demand for lady’s lessons around Penarth,” he said dismissively. “As for Caroline, any acquaintance of hers would have no respectable use for you. No, I have a much better notion.”

  “And that is?” she asked with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  “Why marriage, of course,” he said slowly. “That is the traditional manner ladies are provided for, is it not? And as your fond brother, am I not required to provide a match and a suitable dowry?”

  Mina fel
t her color rise. “You are insolent, my lord. My father asked for no such favor!”

  “Now don’t go back to being all formal,” he sighed. “Did you not address me as brother earlier?”

  “I will never do so again,” she said angrily. “You do not deserve the title.”

  He smirked. “Well, then let us get around this obstacle by calling one another by our given names, at least whilst we are the two of us alone. I will be Jeremy and you will be Mina.”

  She glared at him across the carriage as he took another liberal swig from his flask.

  “And just how do you propose to serve up this husband for me?” she asked caustically.

  “I have someone in mind, Mina,” he admitted. “Someone who... shall we say, wants something from me?”

  “You are indebted to him?”

  “Not exactly.” He shrugged.

  “What should compel him to offer for a relative stranger then?” she asked with mounting ire.

  “Oh, he will make no such offer,” he chortled.

  “If he does not offer then the whole thing is impossible!” she pronounced with some feeling of relief.

  “We shall turn up at his doorstep, then send for a parson and a veil, dear sister. He will speak the vows, though I will need some private conversation with him beforehand.”

  She stared at him open-mouthed. “You are joking, my lord.”

  “Jeremy,” he corrected her.

  “Jeremy, I think you have run quite mad!”

  “I have never been more serious in my life; my dear Mina, I assure you.”

  She had to break off her words as the carriage which had been climbing a slope, came to an abrupt halt.

  Lord Faris twitched the curtain and gazed bleary-eyed out of the window. Mina peered past him but could make out precious little for it had grown dark and blustery outside. In the distance loomed a solitary and lonely looking inn. Mina bit back an exclamation of annoyance for she had thought they were to reach their destination before nightfall, not put up at yet another roadside tavern.

  Jeremy reached up with his silver-topped can and hit the roof three raps. “Make for The Harlot,” he called.

  The Harlot? Surely, she had misheard him. “Do we make for that inn?” Mina asked in dismay.

  “We do,” he said thickly and turned his empty flask upside down.

  “Are we staying the night there or are you simply stopping to refill your flask?” she asked coldly.

  “You’d best learn to curb that tongue, young lady,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “Or I very much doubt married life will be easy for you.”

  Mina glared at him, but his eyes had drifted shut and did not open them again until the carriage came to a halt. For a moment he gazed about him, blinking as though unsure of his surroundings. “Do my ears deceive me, or can I hear fisticuffs?” he asked before darting with a bound from the carriage.

  Mina leaned forward to peer out of the open carriage door. There was certainly a raucous crowd in the vicinity. Whoops and yells and jeers could be heard from what sounded like a very rough and ready bunch. They did not sound at all like the sort of people you would wish to meet on a dark night. She craned her neck out until she could see the coachman.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  He did not answer, simply pointed wordlessly to the swinging inn sign with his whip. Mina glanced up and saw an inn sign of a busty woman with plunging neckline and the name The Merry Harlot proclaimed over her tumbled, blowsy curls. Drawing her cloak closer about her, Mina hastily retreated inside the carriage.

  The public inns they had frequented along their journey had been respectable hostelries that kept good tables and comfortable beds. She had thought Lord Faris liked his comfort far too well to stay anywhere disreputable. This place, however, was of an altogether different caliber. She could only suppose he had gone in search of more alcohol to fortify his plunging spirits.

  Ten minutes later, she was dismayed to see Lord Faris striding across the courtyard toward her, holding a pewter tankard in one hand, and a shapely blonde in the other.

  “Here she is, Ivy my love,” he proclaimed, wrenching the door back open. “Come, Mina, show yourself. I have one here who would fain take a look at you.” He turned back to the blonde. “I assure you Mina is no shrinking violet.”

  Ivy threw back her head and laughed heartily, though Mina failed to see the joke. Given little other choice, she was forced to clamber down from the carriage unaided as Lord Faris did not have a free hand to offer her. She landed in a puddle that splashed up her skirts and made her mood even worse. She gazed back coldly at her half-brother. “Am I to understand we are to put up here for the night?”

  This dissolved both Lord Faris and Ivy into fresh mirth. “See?” he gasped, squeezing the blonde’s waist. “Did I not say she was a regular gorgon? I vow, she can turn a man to stone with one look from those eyes.”

  “I wish that were so, my lord,” Mina answered cutting across Ivy’s giggles. “For I would have found a statue a far pleasanter travelling companion, I assure you.”

  “Oho! Would you indeed?” he cried, releasing Ivy and grabbing Mina’s upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Well, I fancy I have a new companion for you. Though whether you will find him pleasant, is another matter altogether. Is that not so, Ivy my sweet?”

  “If her does, she’ll be the first,” Ivy replied doubtfully with a thick west country accent.

  Mina found herself propelled in the direction of the inn. Surely, he could not mean that the man he intended her to marry was putting up at this den of iniquity.

  “Wait!” she cried, struggling to turn back. “My things!”

  “Juggins will bring your bags.” Lord Faris tightened his hold on her arm.

  “You’re hurting me, my lord!”

  “Then stop struggling, my dear.” To his credit, he did loosen his grip on her arm to seize her wrist instead. Once they reached the courtyard, Mina was surprised by the number of lanterns and torches illuminating the place. Straggling groups of villainous-looking people were strewn around, smoking and drinking and speaking in low voices. Their murmurs fell off to silent stares as Lord Faris marched her across the cobbles and—horror of horrors—into a common taproom.

  If Papa could see her now, she thought, her cheeks flaming as her eyes adjusted to the murky light within. Someone was playing a fiddle and there was a good deal of laughter and jocularity. She could even see other women, she thought as an old toothless crone cackled loudly, slapping her thigh.

  Hanging above the bar was the most indecent wooden carved figurehead she had ever seen. It was in the semblance of a voluptuous woman flaunting her bared breasts for all to see. It must once have graced a ship’s prow, she supposed, but was now suspended from the beams in this gruesome establishment.

  Lord Faris towed her in the direction of the bar and all at once the noise seemed to stop and an eerie hush fell over the room. A horrible prickling sensation travelled up Mina’s spine as she realized all eyes were now turned on her.

  “Take off your bonnet,” Lord Faris said softly as he held up a coin between two of his fingers for the barmaid to take.

  “I will not!” Mina hissed back at him furiously and he chuckled, shaking his head. The barmaid, by contrast to the wooden effigy hanging above her, was plain and angular. She cast a look of undisguised curiosity at Mina before taking Lord Faris’s coin.

  “What’ll her have, your lordship?” she asked, nodding at Mina.

  “Alas, my companion is teetotal,” he answered with a sorrowful click of his tongue. Mina could have sworn she heard the disapproval in the room around her.

  “I’ll take a large gin,” she said loudly over his shoulder.

  “Good for you, gal!” cackled the villainous-looking old woman she had spotted earlier. Lord Faris cast a startled look her way.

  “And I thought you were temperance,” he muttered reproachfully.

  “Did you?” Mina asked him pointedly. The b
armaid plunked a glass down before her and Mina tugged at the wrist he still held. With a lift of his eyebrows, he let her go and Mina reached boldly for the glass. “Assumptions are dangerous things to make, Lord Faris,” she said looking him dead in the eye. Then she lifted the glass and knocked back the noxious fluid.

  A cheer went up in the barroom and Mina gulped it down, swallowing down the instinctive cough and blinking rapidly to dispel her watery eyes. Well, gin was disgusting, she thought as she slammed the glass back down and dragged a black lace mitten across her mouth.

  Lord Faris smiled at her a moment, before pushing away from the bar and turning slowly in a full circle, meeting all eyes which turned his way with a challenging gleam in his own. “William Nye!” he shouted challengingly. “I have something for you!”

  Once again, an uncanny hush fell over the room.

  A whiskered gentleman sat up to the bar, removed the pipe from his mouth. “He be out back, milord,” he said in a slow drawling voice. “Cleaning up after the fight, I’ll warrant.” His manner was pleasant and ponderous and for an instant, Mina could have sworn he winked at her. Mind you, her head was swimming from the gin, so she could not be sure.

  As if on cue, a door from behind the bar swung open and a large, dark, bare-chested man with a towel slung over his head and shoulders prowled through. “Who’s calling my name?” he demanded in a nasty, confrontational tone, gazing around the bar with narrowed eyes. Mina felt a trill of alarm when his gaze flickered over her and seemed to dwell a moment before settling with an expression of extreme loathing on Faris.

  “I did!” Lord Faris answered in what Mina felt to be a needlessly theatrical manner. “I’ve come to settle a matter of unfinished business between us, Nye.”